Legend of the Hyrule Bro Squad
by TheRealEvanSG
Summary: Or, the most ADD of all Hyrule's heroes and an equally ADD country boy-turned-girl embark on a quest to save the kingdom. Eventually. If they can stop getting distracted by everything they see. ...It's going to be a while.
1. Adventure Start

**Legend of the Hyrule Bro Squad**

 **Chapter 1:**

 **Adventure Start**

The flurries of wind rushing across the mountainside were crisp and cool, carrying with it the smell of rain and pine trees. Distantly, the roar of tremendous amounts of water pouring from the sky reached my ears. My clammy skin, still soaked and shivering from the cold rain we'd just escaped, stuck to my heavy tunic and greaves, which made moving difficult.

Unfortunately for me, I needed a _lot_ of easy movement for the task at hand.

"HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT, WE SHOULD NOT HAVE DONE THIS!" I cried, tears streaming down my face as I raced as fast as I could away from the lynel, which was currently bearing down on me like a freaking bullet train. It was easily over two thousand pounds of lean, mean, horse body and lion head, with a thick and knotty mane of red hair covering the back of its head and neck. Its two angry, beady eyes stared daggers at me as it charged, sword raised high above its head.

My brown hair blew behind me as I dove to the right and rolled behind a huge rock outcropping. "ESCAAAAAPE!" I shouted as hooves hammered into the ground past the rock, and the beast's massive sword cleaved through the air where I'd been moments before.

"HYAAAAH!" The iconic shout came with a glint of metal as a smaller sword arced downwards through the air towards the lynel, who had skidded to a stop and was now shaking his head in confusion. Link had climbed up a tree and leapt off the top, paragliding to where the lynel stood, and was now falling down towards it with his Zora Sword pointed straight down at the crown of its head.

Its sharp tip buried itself in the lynel's head as Link collided with the damn thing's back. He winced and grunted at the pain of straddling it upon landing but bore through it and rode the thing like a horse. As I watched in awe, it bucked furiously, disgusting black-and-red Calamity pouring from its new head wound and dissipating in the air. Link held on with all his might, shoving his newest acquired weapon (thank you, whoever would leave a sword lying around on a pathway in a city) deeper into its skull. It howled angrily and gave another mighty buck; Link lost his grip with his legs and hand and was tossed off of it haphazardly.

He tumbled to the ground and rolled for several meters before finally stopping. The poor guy groaned painfully.

"Need... food…" he grunted, reaching into his pouch. "Eve, distract that thing…"

I started. "How am _I_ supposed to distract _that_!?" I shrieked, pointing at the lynel with a trembling finger. "It's the ultimate horror child of Epona and Simba; all _kinds_ of nope!"

"Well, unless you want Sidon to wait for us for eternity…" Link got snappy when annoyed.

I gulped and turned to the lynel, who was now glaring at me again and pawing at the ground. The arrows lodged into its skull, courtesy of the steel bow that I had "borrowed" from an unfortunate lizalfos, only made it look all the more badass. Every inch of its body rippled with muscle, except for its hooves and two horns. It was kind of hard to make hooves and horns muscley.

I looked down at myself, a 5'5" girl with a generous cup size and a slim figure. I had _some_ muscle from weeks spent fucking around in the wild.

I was so screwed.

"You better make me the best goddamn fruitcake in the world after we get back!" I said decisively, reaching back for the bow strapped on my back. Quickly, I notched an arrow and pulled back the bowstring. My arm, unused to the strength of this particular brand of bow, shook for a few moments before I took a deep breath and steadied it. "Come on, come on, you've accidentally hit harder shots than this before."

I released the arrow, and it whistled through the air, nicking the monster's ear.

"...Could be better, but at least I hit it," I muttered. "Wasted so many damn arrows today. Stupid bow. Game didn't say how hard it was to pull back..."

Hooves pounded against the still-wet grass like thunder, and I yelped before charging away from the speeding lynel again. I skirted around its side, hoping that I could gain some distance from it this way. To my chagrin, however, it took only a few seconds to stop, and turned back around to me, only about two meters from me.

"Really?" I groaned. I put my bow back on my back and unsheathed a Knight's Broadsword. After a very brief pause, I took out my dinged up Traveller's Shield as well.

With a roar, the lynel stepped forward and swiped its sword diagonally at me. The shock of its connection with my shield sent painful vibrations throughout my entire arm. I stumbled backwards, nearly losing my footing on the damp grass.

"Liiiink?" I called out worriedly, not daring to take my eyes off of my enormous opponent as it rose its sword up for another attack. "You healed up yet?"

"I just need a few more apples, hang in there!" Link's voice was slightly distorted through what I could only assume was a mouthful of apples.

"Dammit, dammit, dammit," I cursed, biting my lower lip as the sword came crashing down on me again. I managed to block it a second time, but the power behind it was truly insane. It felt like a bus falling on my arm. I cried out in pain and fell backwards.

"And done!" my Hylian friend shouted at last, scrambling to his feet. He gave a huge battle cry as he ran towards us, beautiful white sword clutched tightly in his hand. I rolled under another swipe of the lynel's sword and dealt a blow of my own to its leg as I went underneath it. It roared and tried to get in a position to return the favor, but Link jumped up in front of it and, faster than I could quite make out, sliced its face open several times.

The Zora Sword broke on the last hit.

"Well, that one didn't last too long," the hooded man in the Champion's Tunic deadpanned. He pulled out a Knight's Claymore from his Small Pouch of Holding, as I'd named it, and backflipped away from a furious swipe of a Lynel Sword.

Time seemed to slow down as Link rushed forward and delivered an impressive flurry of attacks to its chest. It roared and kicked him aside.

I blinked and scrambled out from beneath it. "It didn't do that in the game," I muttered.

"Ow," said Link, on the ground once more.

He got to his feet again, a little woozily this time, and again leaped into action. Between the both of us attacking it at once, the lynel grew increasingly frustrated and got several more nasty looking cuts on its leathery skin. It eventually decided these tactics weren't working, apparently, because it sheathed its Lynel Sword and Shield and instead pulled out its Lynel Bow, notching three shock arrows.

"Oh fuck, it has the arrows again!" I screamed, turning tail and running like my life depended on it. "Get to cover! And avoid the puddles everywhere!"

"R-Right!" Link gulped. He scurried away, shield clanking on his back.

The shock arrows on its bow sparked behind us. A few tense moments hung in time… then, as I tried to duck behind a tree, the lynel released its arrows.

I saw them fly through the air out of the corner of my eye. One sang through the wind in my direction; one headed for Link; the electricity-tipped arrow in the middle flew safely between us. Link, who had apparently ate some Speedy fruit and gained more distance than I had, was able to duck under the arrow aimed at him. But I didn't have that advantage.

The arrow flying on a collision course with my chest seemed to fly in slow motion. My eyes widened as I realized that it was coming right at me. I tried to move away, since there was no time to duck, but it was a meter away - mere centimeters now -

Then time sped up again, I saw one long, thin wood shaft piercing out of my side.

I didn't feel any pain.

Link froze and turned to me, face ashen. "E-Eve?" he called out hesitantly. Strangely, it sounded much further away than he actually was.

"I… I feel fine…" I murmured, touching the arrow in both fearful awe and confusion.

"Eve, your hearts…" Link swallowed, staring at me with wide, horrified eyes. "Your hearts… that arrow brought you down to a… a q-qah…"

That was weird… why was the world getting so fuzzy? I was having a lot of trouble hearing Link now, too, especially with the snorting of the lynel as it stared at me. "What?" I swayed, suddenly feeling terribly weak. I only barely managed to plant my feet on the ground and stopped myself from falling over.

This… this felt familiar…

This weak feeling…

Like all the strength was draining from me…

"EVE!" Link shouted, eyes widening even further. He rushed to my side, reaching for me desperately. He looked so scared. Why was he so scared?

I yanked the arrow from my side and dropped it on the ground; touched my wound; was dimly surprised to find blood on my fingers when I brought them up to my fingers.

"It's… so red…" I said slowly, fascinated by the sight of it even though I'd seen my own blood before. I'd never seen quite so _much_ of my own blood, though…

I swayed again, and was distantly shocked that I was unable to support myself this time. I collapsed to my knees, stopping my fall with just my right hand, my incredibly shaking right hand.

"Eve, hang in there!" Link pleaded, kneeling next to me and putting a hand on my back. He dug in his Small Pouch of Holding. "Come on, come on, I need some good food… don't I have any major healing meals left!?"

 _"_ _Evan! Come on, answer me! This can't be happening, this can't be happening… open your eyes! Open your eyes!"_

This felt…

 _"_ _He's close, but he's still not gone yet! You should be proud, ma'am. Your son has an impressive will to live."_

So familiar…

 _"_ _The surgery… edibly dangerou…" I drifted in and out of consciousness, only vaguely aware that there were other people in the far-too-bright room. The blinding light hurt my eyes, which were only opened by a sliver. Pain, pain everywhere. Everything hurt, and at the same time, I felt incredibly numb. Something was beeping steadily. People were arguing. I wanted to go back to sleep._

I gasped as the first waves of pain swept through me, and suddenly I realized that since the shock arrow had hit me, I had, darkly amusingly, been in shock. Bolts of electric, burning pain sparked throughout my body, especially around my side. My heart hammered intensely in my chest.

"Ev… t this…!" Link was saying, even as my vision swam in front of my eyes. "Thi… ill hel…"

A terrible roar drowned out everything else, and the lynel, that damned monster that was terrorizing our dear Zora friends, charged forward, its sword held skyward. Link gritted his teeth and was forced to drop whatever he'd been holding, grab his sword, and howl as he ran into battle, sword flashing furiously with the soft mid-evening sunlight.

 _I was awake again, I realized with some surprise. I had been dreaming a quite wonderful dream that I didn't remember. Funny, that, how the best dreams seem to always be the ones you forget._

 _"_ _How is… urger… will he sur… How his condition?"_

 _That was my dad. He sounded so worried._

 _"_ _The surgery was shaky… ultimately a success… but he lost… lot of blood… it's all u… to him now until we can get a transfusion…"_

 _But I was so sleepy again… and I was so tired of waking up only to be in pain. The burning agony was gone now, mostly, but I still felt so exhausted._

 _My eyes fluttered shut again. Maybe this time… I could finally…_

 _The machine that was beeping gave one long, final beep, and that day was the day that I died._

As Link continued to fight with an outraged roar, I found myself drifting off to a weak dream, a memory of how my adventures in this world began.

~o~

SEVERAL WEEKS AGO

I woke up with a bleary groan, my eyes fluttering open weakly before shutting again. I felt as though for the past week or so, I'd been in intense pain, the likes of which I'd never felt before. The last thing I remembered clearly was walking down the sidewalk towards my car in the town near my home. There was a kid playing ball in a yard on the opposite side of the street, and the ball bounced out into the street. He ran out onto the road to pick it up, and a car came around the curve, some drunken bastard behind the wheel going easily forty miles per hour in an urban zone. I had dashed as hard as I could out to the kid to push him away, screaming for him to run…

Then there'd been pain, pain and a lot of sleeping and waking. There'd been hospital lights and doctors rushing me through halls on a stretcher. There'd been a surgery… I remembered waking up enough to talk about what needed to be done and to give my consent for it. I remembered the surgery being a success…

And that was the last thing I remembered.

Where was I now? Was I back in my hospital room, recovering from the surgery, or was I back in my rural house on the hill? Wherever it was, the floor felt hard, cold, and distinctly stiff and uncomfortable. My head was fuzzy and my arms tingly, as though filled with some strange kind of energy. I weakly raised my hand to my head and rubbed it as I rolled onto my stomach.

My eyes widened. I laid on gray stone, and my chest felt like it had two large orbs attached to it. Wide awake now, I hurried to my feet, looking down.

I had tits.

What the hell?

I groped them in a mix of fascination and confusion, surprised at the spark of… something that raced through my nerves. That had felt… good. Blushing deeply, I immediately quit, fearing what might happen if I continued _that_. What exactly was going on? I'd never had boobs before. I was a _dude_ , and a 140-pound dude at that. Guys weren't supposed to have melons unless they were obese, and even then, they didn't have the same kind of… _plump_ to them that these ones did.

My hair was also longer, I suddenly realized as a strand of it fell over my shoulder, and with a nervous swallow, I slowly reached down to touch the Place Where Sun Doesn't Shine.

My cheeks grew even pinker and a shriek rose up in my lips. A decidedly _feminine_ shriek.

"Oh," I squeaked, blushing at the realization that I was now 100% girl. " _Oh._ "

How exactly did this happen? I had no idea, so I supposed the answer would have to wait.

More importantly, where exactly was I? Now that the issue of my own body had been addressed and tabled, I stared at my surroundings, getting more and more confused and concerned the more I saw. I was in a small, squarish chamber with cold, stale air, as well as roughly textured gray walls with orange constellations on them. Weird pillars shoved into the walls held up the roof, which had a machine that almost looked like an upside-down flower hanging from the top of it, covered in glowing blue dots. I couldn't tell the machine's function, but it looked at once both extremely futuristic and ancient.

And underneath said machine… was a sort of tub containing draining, glowing light blue liquid and a blond boy who was naked except for his shorts.

I blinked in shock. I recognized this boy. Moreover, I recognized this _scene._ The boy was Link, the Hero of Hyrule, and the scene was the opening of a game I'd just bought and had been playing the hell out of, _Breath of the Wild_.

Holy Hell.

Was this real?

I pinched my body (definitely not one of my new, and apparently sensitive, nipples. Why would I do that?) to confirm this. It was indeed real.

As the Resurrection liquid finished draining and Link finally opened his eyes, standing up to his full height, I stared in horror. I had died and been reincarnated in the Shrine of Resurrection at the start of Link's adventures in a wild world overrun with enemies and monsters, hadn't I? And not only that, but as a girl.

...I was so fucked.


	2. The Old Man on the Plateau

**Chapter 2**

 **Into the Wild**

"Who are you? Were you the one talking to me?"

The moment Link saw me, his eyes widened desperately and these words poured out of his mouth.

I shook my head. "Sorry, I just woke up in here."

He looked around the room, blinking. "How did we get in here? It's sealed off from the outside. And where is here, anyway?" His words were accompanied with a rich European accent. Fitting, seeing as how all the voice-acted characters in the game had accents too.

"Dunno," I lied. "I just woke up here, same as you. Though something tells me our situations are a little bit different. You were in that pool, after all. And I only got here recently; you were in the pool since before I arrived."

Link remained silent for a few moments.

"Do you remember how you got here?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I have no memories at all. Everything before waking up in that bath is hazy. The only reason I know my name at all is because I heard a voice talking to me, telling me to wake up… a beautiful voice." He looked up at me sadly and added, "I thought it might be you when I saw you."

"You heard a voice, huh?" I said, sighing and scratching the side of my head. "Well, I can't say I know anything about that, but maybe we can find some clues about it when we get out of this place."

He blinked at that and said, "Oh, right. But this place looks sealed." Link's eyes fell upon a pedestal underneath a stalactite-like formation, which glowed with eerie blue carvings. "I wonder if that thing is connected to the door somehow."

"Door?" I asked stupidly, and Link pointed at the front of the room, where a door made of white slabs interlocked with each other sealed off the entrance. Oh, right. I hadn't seen that during my initial overview of my surroundings. "I'd say that's as likely as anything else," I said. I conveniently left out the fact that I actually knew how to get out.

Link frowned at the stone pedestal, then reached his hand out towards it.

When his fingers passed over its center, it quite suddenly lit up and played a short little chime. He flinched and yanked his hand away instinctively. In his mind, it probably was the logical thing to do, but it really looked quite silly. As he regained his composure, the Sheikah Slate in its center rose up on a metal rest, which turned the Slate over so its backside, covered with the stone casing and emblazoned with a glowing orange eye design, faced upwards and its handle pointed towards the far wall.

The Slate appeared as both ancient and high-tech as many other things in this room did. It had a cool stone border that supported a handle complete with finger grips for easier carrying. It had a hole built into the casing to support a camera, and its screen was clean and unblemished. I wondered how long it would remain so after many adventures in the wild, or if it was built out of Nokia or something.

Who knew? Depending on its durability, it had the potential to make a surprisingly good weapon in a pinch.

And I don't just mean the App-lied Bullshit, either.

"Whoa," Link said, blinking dumbly at the Slate.

He tentatively reached back and took it off the rest by its handle, turned it over, and stared at the screen as it lit up. Meanwhile, the rest swiveled back into the pedestal. The room rumbled, drawing our attention to its front. The door's slabs opened at different intervals, the middle slab rising up first, the two next to it rising up afterwards, and so on.

Link and I exchanged glances.

"Guess that's our cue," I said, shrugging, and Link nodded. Together, we jogged under the rising door slabs as the first slab thudded to the apex of its rise. I was just eager to get out of that stuffy room before my allergies acted up and had me sneezing up a fucking storm. That never looked pretty.

Unfortunately, the next room was just about as stale and stuffy as the previous one. It was more of a hallway than a room, and consisted of a small staircase with only a few steps carved straight out of the stone; a bunch of crates, half-broken and eroded barrels, and two chests sitting on the platform above the slight staircase; and a very tiny pedestal on the far end of the room that sat beside another door. Blue lamps with a foggy glass, somehow still glowing despite the hundred years I knew Link had slept in the Shrine and the thousands of years the Shrine had existed, lined either wall. They threw dim blue light across the corridor, casting creepy shadows in the places they didn't quite reach.

Link paused and glanced at the first chest. He looked at me with a frown. "Should I open it?"

"Yeah, go ahead," I said.

"But… what if it's somebody else's stuff and I'm stealing it?"

I stared flatly at him. "Link, there is enough dust on these chests to make a snake sneeze, and snakes don't have noses. Nobody's coming back for whatever's in there."

He winced and knelt at the chest. "Okay, okay, I'm opening it."

A pair of well-worn trousers lay folded neatly in the chest, smelling badly of old age and ripped in several places. Still, Link looked glad to have the clothing, and quickly put them on. Now it was only his chest that remained bare for all the world to see, and, well, I had to admit that it wasn't all that bad to look at. That wasn't even any new female hormones I might have had speaking, that was one hundred percent Evan speaking. He had a firm chest even despite the literal century of sleep he'd had, one that told of countless hours spent working out. Whereas I, on the other hand, didn't even have a two-pack.

I was pretty jealous.

Link moved on to the next chest and found an old shirt inside it. Both the shirt and the pants were tan, so they matched pretty well, and both fit him exactly. I assumed they were pairs of his clothes that Purah (hadn't that been who'd taken him to the Shrine of Resurrection?) had left for him. Either way, while they smelled pretty bad, he seemed rather pleased with them, so with that out of the way, we proceeded to the end of the hall towards the pedestal and Link suddenly stopped short. As I looked at him curiously, his eyes widened and he grabbed the Sheikah Slate, then held it up to the glowing orange circle with a dot in it in the pedestal's center.

The pedestal displayed a burst of blue light that momentarily blinded both of us, and when we'd blinked the spots out of our eyes, the glowing design on the pedestal had become blue.

At the same time, the room rumbled and another sealed slab door at the wall in front of us lit up with a blue Sheikah eye, and then the slabs slowly slid apart from each other. Glaring light spilled into the dim corridor from underneath it, the amount growing as the door opened more and more.

We shielded our eyes from the light with our arms as we stepped out into the doorway, staring out to the bright outdoors. I had to squint to adjust to the change in brightness. As I did so, a fresh wave of air burst into the underground Shrine of Resurrection, enough to slightly blow our hair back for a few seconds. I breathed in the fresh smell of trees and grass happily, glad for the taste of nice, clean air.

Grinning, I turned to Link and said, "Come on, slowpoke, let's get out of this place!" and rushed forward underneath the slabs. Link sputtered for a moment before shaking his head and following suit.

Beyond the door was another series of dusty stairs that led up to a straight, narrow platform, which after a few meters would've turned into another flight leading out of the cave had it not been for some rock that had fallen in its path. I paused for a moment at the rock and considered my long, feminine fingers and my smooth, fairly weak hands, wondering if it would be a bit difficult to climb up. The rock blockade stood taller than me, and I'd never been much of a climber. To my surprise, though, once I started climbing, I didn't even have to search for hand or footholds; it was like my fingers just magically found leverage on the surface of the rock.

I drummed it up to video game logic.

A moment or two after I scrambled up the barrier, Link did, too, and we got to our feet and jogged out the steps that sloped up to the entrance to the cave, where we could just see some sort of tall, straight tree (I was no expert on them, dammit) beyond the rocky mouth. We picked up speed as we reached the exit, excited laughter bubbling up from Link's gut, and at last leaped out into the warm sunlight.

The bright, cheerful Sun hung in the west in mid-evening, if I were to judge, and we stood on a natural, grassy path that swept up the side of a cliff. Tall, swaying ferns cropped up through the untamed grass, and pencil-shaped trees towered proudly in the air. Directly in front of us was a stone outcropping on a ledge that rose up slightly, and we both raced towards the edge. We stopped short, grinning widely and staring out at the drop-dead gorgeous sight that greeted us.

The entirety of Hyrule Kingdom, as well as much of the Great Plateau on which we currently stood, lay spread out before us as far as the eye could see. Hyrule Castle, a proud and regal old English-style structure, slept out in the distance directly ahead of us. From what I remembered of the game's map, it lay due north of the Plateau. Between it and us was a large forest far, far below, as well as the retaining wall which separated the Plateau from Hyrule Kingdom. More woods, teeming with fresh, green life, separated us from the retaining wall.

Further beyond Hyrule Castle and to the west sat Death Mountain, lava bubbling down through its volcanic crags. Closer towards us but further west still, the Dueling Peaks fought for dominance of the grand, blue skies. And far to the east was a snowy region area I thought I remembered being the Hebra Mountains. The range's pure white snow contrasted with the fiery Death Mountain on the other end of the Kingdom stunningly.

It was absolutely breathtaking.

"Whoa," Link said, baby blue eyes wide.

I nodded dumbly. Seeing it in the game and then seeing it in real life proved to be two entirely different things. "Whoa indeed."

For a few moments that felt much longer than they actually were, we simply stood breathless, gazing out onto the incredibly gorgeous, wild territory that was the land of Hyrule. Then Link turned to the right, staring out over the Plateau, and suddenly pointed down the sloping path.

"There's someone down there staring at us!" he exclaimed, glancing up at me. "I don't know why, but… I feel like we should go talk to him."

I shrugged. "Lead the way, boss."

The young man, shorter than me despite having shrunk a few inches as a girl, blinked at the _boss_ thing, but shrugged and headed off down the slope. I followed after a few moments of staring at his back and distantly considering just how _strange_ it was to be looking at the back of a real-life video game character. Other than that initial moment of _oh fuck_ , it hadn't really hit just how weird my life was about to become. Weird and EXTREMELY ragdoll-y.

I really should've gone out and exercised all those times my mom nagged me to instead of derping around on my computer.

It took about half a minute to make our way down the slope. While we walked, Link suddenly turned to me, blue eyes raised with innocent curiosity.

"What's your name?"

"Huh?" I said dumbly.

"Your name," Link repeated. "You never told me what it was."

"Oh, it's Eva-" I paused, not sure how he'd react to hearing a girl introduce herself with a guy's name. And since I had a female body, I might as well go full girl, right? "Evelyn. You can call me, uh, Eve for short, though."

He nodded, his long hair brushing against his shirt-covered back with the breeze. "Nice name."

"Thanks."

"Nice to meet you, Lady Eve," he said, grinning, and I grinned too, although that came with an eye-roll.

"And you as well, Sir Link," I said, my voice dripping with humored sarcasm, and we both fell into snickers as we approached the old man.

"Oho, well met, strangers!" the aforementioned geezer said, his voice kind and warm. He stood up tall, at a greater height than either of us. He was swathed from head to toe in a black cloak and maroon robes. A gigantic, bushy white beard hid most of his face from view and the cloak made it tough to make out the rest, but I could tell it had wrinkled with age. He carried a currently unlit oil lamp on a walking stick. Warmth radiated from the crackling campfire he sat next to, and the deliciously sweet smell of baked apples drew my attention to the ground.

"It's a little unusual to see strangers 'round these parts," he said, an accent like Link's on every word. His voice didn't sound like King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule's, which I guessed was a part of the ghost's disguise. His eyes turned to me, and a rather unreadable though suspicious expression crossed his face. "Especially young ladies." I got the feeling he wasn't actually talking about the fact that I was female.

My stomach growled a little, drawing an embarrassed blush from me.

Man, I hadn't realized how ravenous I was until just now. It felt like my stomach was trying to wage war on me.

"Hungry, are you?" the old man said, lightening up. He noticed me staring at a baked apple laying next to the orange fire. He smiled and pointed at it with his walking stick. "Feel free to take it if you wish. There are plenty of apples in the trees around these parts. I have many more where that came from."

"Thanks, sir," I said gratefully, and quickly knelt down to grab the apple off the ground. It was rather squishy, having lost much of its hardness from being cooked, and it made my fingers sticky with juice; but I wolfed it down like I hadn't eaten in weeks. It didn't do much to quench my hunger, but I did feel curiously stronger after it had disappeared down my gullet.

Link stared at me wide-eyed. "You inhaled that thing in just a few seconds."

I shrugged. "I eat fast when I'm starving. I think in a past life I was an anime protagonist."

Link's head tilted with confusion, and the King-in-disguise raised an eyebrow. "What's an… anime?" they asked in tandem.

I waved it off, wiping delicious, warm apple juice from my lips. "Don't worry about it," I said, rubbing my hand off on my pants. "Just rambling."

Link blinked. He stared at me as if thinking, _This girl is weird._

Why, yes, Link. Yes, I am.

Link turned his eyes on the old man, studying him. "Were you looking at us earlier?"

"Why, yes, I was, actually," the disguised ghost admitted. "I've been relaxing here all day and hadn't seen either of you enter that cave on the top of the path, and was rather surprised when you came out. How did you get there, if you don't mind me asking?" His gaze shifted to me at that final question, and I felt it was more aimed at me than Link.

"I…" Link hesitated. "I don't remember," he admitted weakly.

I shrugged. "Neither do I," I half-lied. While I knew I'd died, after all, I had no idea how that caused me to end up here. So it wasn't a full lie, just not all the truth.

The old man stared sadly at Link. "Do you remember anything?"

The blond shook his head. "All I have is my name, Link. And I only know that because a woman's voice told me."

"Did you recognize the voice?" the ghost pressed desperately.

Link shook his head again

Silence fell on the cliffside path again as our acquaintance's mood turned noticeably bluer. "I see," he intoned, and he sounded like he'd gained a thousand years in age just between the two sentences alone. Link frowned at that, and he opened his mouth, perhaps to ask a question, but the old man rolled his shoulders back and regarded Link seriously. "Do you know where this place is?"

"No, sir."

"And what about you?" the old man asked me with a hard stare.

"I don't know," I lied again.

He nodded and turned out to face the north, sweeping wide with his walking stick. "This," he said, "is the **Great Plateau**. Ancient legend tells that the kingdom of Hyrule began here." He walked forward, past the edge of the cliff that hung over him and pointed with his hand to where a lake had pooled up in a basin. A tall, grassy rock that was shaped rather like a lopsided cake, which had a rusty sword embedded in a stone at its top layer, rose up out of the middle of the lake. Beyond it was the majestic temple that remained one of the most iconic locations of Zelda history. "That temple over there… long ago, it was the site of many sacred ceremonies. But ever since the decline of the kingdom one hundred years ago, it has sat abandoned and decrepit. Just another forgotten entity… A mere ghost of its former self…"

An awkward, depressing silence hung in the air between Link and I, and we exchanged uncomfortable looks.

"Well, er, we should be going," Link spoke up. "Right, Eve?" He turned to me for help.

"Yeah," I said, nodding hurriedly. "Gotta go. Places to be. Sights to see."

The old man bowed. "I shall be here for some time, and I also frequent the rest of these lower parts of the Plateau. Should you need help, please let me know if I may be of service. I have a torch and an axe here nearby. Feel free to take them if you are in need of weapons. The land has been rather dangerous as of late."

I nodded. "Thank you, sir."

"We appreciate your hospitality," Link said, returning the bow.

And on that somber note, we headed off further north down the path. The world didn't seem quite so bright and cheerful as it had when we'd left the cave. Not after the depressing old man's words.


	3. The First Sheikah Slate

**Chapter 3**

 **The Sheikah Tower**

We were silent for a few minutes as we walked down the path in the direction of the retaining wall. Link curiously looked up at some of the big, bulky trees we passed as we walked, and I glanced at him, wondering what he was thinking. By this point, we'd left the old man behind us on the trail, his axe and torch in our possession. Link had strapped the axe, a simple woodcutter's axe, heavy and wickedly sharp, on his back. It had a black blade and a thick wooden handle, and it looked like it was built with durability in mind. The torch was… well… a torch, and not seeing any other option, I simply carried it in my hand.

At last, I broke the awkwardness from the depressing conversation with the old man and asked him.

"Think there's anything up in those trees?" Link replied, answering my question with another. "I think I saw some birds fly out of them."

I blinked. As I remembered, some of the trees had eggs in their tops.

"Maybe," I said, shrugging. Now I was looking curiously at them myself. "Some of them might have useful things like eggs and acorns."

Link stood still. He considered the tree for a few moments. "I'm gonna… climb the tree?" He sounded unsure.

"You're gonna climb the tree?" I asked.

"...I'm gonna climb the tree," Link repeated, firmly this time.

He dashed up to the base of the tree, planted a foot on its trunk, and then bear-hugged it like he was trying to squeeze it to death. He then scampered up it much like some of the sloths I'd once seen in the Amazon Rainforest back in my first life. Upon reaching the uppermost branches, he easily pulled himself on them and then looked about.

"Nothing in this one," he called back down to me, voice deflated and disappointed. I had the mental image of a puppy being told it couldn't have its treat.

I shrugged. "Can't expect to find stuff in all of them," I shouted back.

He hopped down the tree and landed lightly—okay, that should not be possible, he should have _at least_ twisted his foot badly. My eye twitched a little. There was something wonky at work here.

"I'm gonna go look in the other trees," he said matter-of-factly. His face was set, and I got the feeling I wouldn't be talking him out of this. "There's something in at least one of them, I know it."

You know the old saying: If you can't persuade them, join them. Seeing no other option except sitting on the ground and waiting for Link to get done, I sighed and decided I might as well help him out.

...You know, looking back, that's not advice to be followed when dealing with American politics.

Forget I said that.

Anyway, from our impromptu spat of material gathering, Link's pouch grew three eggs heavier. Well, I _say_ heavier, but to my surprise, he actually could not feel any extra weight inside it, nor did he feel any added bulkiness. This was especially surprising because the pouch was about the size of a pencil case and should not have been able to fit objects the size of the eggs we'd put inside it.

Back on the ground again, we both stared dumbfounded at the item-eating pouch.

"It… the eggs disappeared inside it…" I said, blinking rapidly.

Link glared furiously at it. "Oh, I better be able to get them back!" he snapped, and stuck his hand in the pouch. He fished about inside it, confusion overriding his momentary anger.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

He frowned. "I can't… feel a bottom. Or anything at all, really."

...What the hell? That shouldn't physically be possible. I stared at him in disbelief. "Hand that damn thing over."

"Huh?" Link looked up just as I grabbed the strap of his pouch and forced it away from him. His hand slipped out, and I brought the bag up to my face, glaring suspiciously at it. I turned it around, searching for any sign of a bulge. Eggs those size should've definitely made at least some bulge in a leather pouch this small. An annoyed _hrrrrmm_ rumbled out of my lips, and I stuck my own hand in it. And then my arm. And then my _forearm_.

"...Okay, what the _fuck_ ," I said, jaw dropping.

Link stared. "That's… unusual. Or at least. I think so?"

"This _should not be possible_ ," I affirmed, staring dumbly at the small bag that had swallowed my entire arm. The weirdest part was that I could still _feel_ my arm; it was definitely there, definitely _inside the pouch_. We just couldn't tell from the outside. We both were silent for a few minutes."

"Holy shit," I said at last, staring up wide-eyed at Link. "You have a Small Pouch of Holding."

"A what now?"

"Hammerspace," I clarified.

Link blinked blankly at me. I sighed. "Your pouch here is extremely bigger on the inside than it is on the outside and will be able to hold lots and lots of things."

"Oh. But still, where are the eggs—?"

I had started to shake the bag for emphasis as Link was asking that, and right after the word _eggs_ left his lips…

CRUNCH! _SQUELCH!_

My fingers wrapped around a few certain, small objects that were suddenly in my palm a _bit_ too hard, and a sticky wetness that had nothing to do with lewd things covered my hand.

"...Found 'em," I deadpanned, glaring in annoyance at the henceforth named Small Pouch of Holding. As well as at the universe in general. It had a really messed-up sense of timing. Link apparently agreed, if the inarticulate whine of _loss_ that rose up from his throat was anything to go by.

"We spent entire minutes getting those things!" he complained, face wrinkled with anger at the unfairness of it all. " _Minutes_!"

"I know, I know," I started soothingly, extracting my hand from the pouch and shaking off the yolks and whites—

SPLAT! _"OINK!"_

Before the both of us froze when said yolks and whites audibly splattered against something that was _not_ the ground. Something that was alive and porcine and _oh this is not good._

The bushes I'd waved my hand at rustled furiously, and a bokoblin stepped out from the treeline The thing was exactly as you'd expect: squat, smelly, ugly… and if the scowl its fanged maw was twisted into underneath the facemask of egg fluids it was wearing? Not. Happy. In the least.

The bokoblin glared at me witheringly. Admittedly, it did look a bit silly with slimy egg running all down its face, but still, very evil and very mad.

Curse you, universe. You really do have the worst timing, don't you?

"He did it," I said quickly, pointing with my egg yolk-covered hand at Link as I shoved the bag back into his hands, causing him to sputter in disbelief.

The bokoblin was having none of my shenanigans, though. It leaped at me, gaining some surprising air, and for the first time I noticed the long, spindly wooden spear that it clenched in its hand. That was largely because it was wildly waving said spear at me as it fell at my face.

"Shit, shit, shit!" I gulped, and promptly executed a masterful barrel roll to get out of its path. "Link! You have the sharp, heavy weapon! From thy heart, stab at it, you idiot!"

Now _that_ jolted him into action. "Right! HIYAH!" With the classic Legend of Zelda shout, he lifted the axe off his back and high into the air as the bokoblin landed where I was a second ago and stumbled. Sunlight glinted off the heavy, metal blade, and Link slammed it down in a crushing head blow.

The bokoblin screeched in pain as it tumbled back into the bushes. Something red and black spewed from the top of its bald little head and splashed onto the grassy ground; its blood, maybe? Actually, now that I thought about it, I leaned in to give it a closer look. It looked like… yeah, I was almost 99% certain that was Malice. At least, it had the same kind of color, that disgusting mixture of black and red, and the oily oozy viscosity I remembered from the game.

Whatever it was, it stank like putrid corruption and looked rancid, and I absolutely _did not_ want that shit touching my skin.

The bokoblin leaped wildly back out of the bushes, rustling them as it tried to attack us, but Link jumped to the side instinctively at the last second.

It was like time slowed down, or maybe it sped up for Link? Either way, way too quickly than what should have been possible, his axe cleaved through the air in a multitude of quick attacks. My eyes opened wide as I watched the flurry of motion, but before I could properly make a move, the bokoblin tumbled to the ground, bleeding its black-and-red ooze. As I watched in shock, its body turned into black shadow and then dissipated. It left only the spear, a horn and a fang.

I stared up at Link, blinking. "What just happened?"

"I… I dunno," he admitted, appearing just as surprised as I felt. He stared at his axe in shock. "The moment I dodged, it was like everything just… slowed down and I was the only one left moving a normal speed."

"Huh," I breathed in awe. Well, it looked like the theory about Link's supposedly missing Champion power being the Flurry Rush and Parry effects was indeed true.

Good to know.

Very good to know.

"Well," I announced, shaking myself out of a shocked stupor. I shrugged, handed my torch to Link, grabbed the spear off the ground, and marched down the path again, "That'll be useful. Now come on, let's go."

Link looked up after and blinked. "Go where?"

I froze and turned to look at him flatly. "I was following you." Oh Hylia, _this_ bit, seriously?!

" _I_ was following _you_ ," he said, staring. Apparently yes, it _was_ this bit. Damn.

"...Uhhh…" I stood there for a few seconds looking exceedingly dumb. "Er… maybe just keep walking and see if anything happens?"

"That sounds like a stupid plan," Link deadpanned.

"Do you have any better ones?" I shot back just as flatly.

He looked like he wanted to argue but had nothing to say. At last he sighed and facepalmed. "Alright, fine." He rolled his eyes as we set off toward the retaining wall again. We had now transitioned from a natural grassy slope to a broken, old stone path, one part of which led down into the rest of the Great Plateau and the other turning off to our right and leading to a staircase up to the Temple of Time.

We walked down the smooth slope, and I noticed how it transitioned into earth-covered stone stairs that had cracked with age. As we walked, a dip in the land revealed a ruined structure that may have once been a house or some kind of building related to the Temple of Time, some distance away from it. A small apple tree stuck up out of the ground on the hill above it, and a long-ruined courtyard, grass growing between the slabs of stone. Some stairs led up a hill and wrapped around another larger ruined building a level above the first, and continued on to the Temple. A pig-faced bokoblin, red-skinned and beady-eyed, patrolled the path.

We skirted around the ruins to the overgrown courtyard. Nature didn't like the fact that it was there and decided to retake the ground space. This was true for most of the ruins, actually; they were fading into the ground, reclaimed and broken down by the elements.

We had just about reached the center of the courtyard when Link suddenly froze and his feminine face turned toward the heavens.

"Everything alright?" I said, worried, but he made no sign of hearing me. Instead, he suddenly pulled out his Sheikah Slate, which hung on his belt, and tapped the screen. It showed a blacked out map of what I could only assume was the Plateau, and a yellow circle laid over a specific spot on said map just ahead of us.

"We have to go there," Link said, ripping his gaze up from the Slate to the direction the marker had been located in. "I don't know why, but that's what she said!"

"Who said?" I asked, even though I realized he must've heard Zelda's voice again.

He dashed forward, determination etched into his features. "I don't know! That voice!"

"Wait, hold on! Hey, listen!"

I chased him past a ruined fountain which was filled with dirt and bits of grass rather than water, and that had a pile of rubble laying against it on the opposite side. He charged towards a path that sloped down towards the edge of the Plateau, and quite suddenly two blobs of blue slime popped up out of the ground, each sporting two bugged-out orange eyes. The Chuchus locked on to Link, but he simply frowned and took his axe out of his pouch before making mincemeat out of them. All that was left of them were chunks of jelly.

"Hey!" I shouted, now very irritated. "Stop ignoring me!"

"Just follow me!" he called back. He slowed to a fast walk to catch his breath for a few seconds before dashing off again.

I had to stop and slump over, resting my hands on my knees as I panted heavily. Damn, I was not built for running. These boobs were _really_ heavy. I hoped they had bras in post-apocalyptic Hyrule, otherwise forget pain in the ass, adventuring was going to be a pain in the _chest_.

By the time I got off the long, very gradual sloping path, Link was far ahead of me, clashing axe-to-sword with a bokoblin. The bokoblin carried a short one-handed sword in its right hand and a wooden shield that didn't look very durable in its left. The shield was really just a slab of wood that had been carved out of a tree or something. It had knots in it and hadn't even been cut evenly.

While Link and the bokoblin squared off against each other, testing each other for openings, I frowned and ran forward, boobs rubbing against my shirt. It was basically a girl's version of the green T-shirt I'd been wearing prior to my death, and my pants were just a pair of light, fashionably scratched blue jeans. Again, they appeared to be more of a feminine variety than the original pair I'd owned. I didn't have my cell phone in them (I'd checked), but I _did_ have my wallet, as well as a few green, blue, and red rupees inside it. (Again, I'd already checked.)

I splashed past some puddles of water that filled up some dips in the dirty land and dashed over some rocks on the other side. I gripped my boko spear at the ready just in case Link needed back up.

It didn't look like he did, though. The monster relaxed its stance, lowering its shield in order to wind up a swipe, and Link took the opportunity to quickly dart in with an axe chop of his own. It sliced open a nasty wound on the monster's neck, leaving it dazed and howling in pain, and Link finished it off with another couple quick blows. By the time I reached him again, it faded into shadow and left only its sword and shield behind. Link casually picked these up. He stuck his axe into his Small Pouch of Holding in favor of the lighter, easier-to-carry sword. Both sword and shield he hung on his back.

"Nice moves, chief," I whistled appreciatively.

Link said nothing for a few moments. "That's where I'm supposed to go to," he said, pointing ahead of him. I followed his gaze and saw the top of an ancient tower buried under a lot of earth, revealed only from our side. The inside of it was completely shadowed by the rocks covering its top. I spotted another pedestal for Link's Sheikah Slate inside.

"Well," I said, rolling my eyes, "what are you waiting for? Let's go check it out."

"Right." Slower now, Link walked up to it, me trailing closely behind him. We entered the top section of the buried tower, walking over a curious circle that had an intricate stone design around it. What looked like a stalactite stuck out of the top of the tower, part of it covered in earth, dark like obsidian. The pedestal lay beneath it, the area for the Sheikah Slate glowing orange.

" _Place the Sheikah Slate inside the pedestal_ ," said a robotic voice emotionlessly.

Link stopped in front of the pedestal and placed the Sheikah Slate inside. The holder for the Slate sank down into the pedestal.

" _Sheikah Tower activated._ _Please watch for falling rocks."_

Link blinked. "Falling rocks— !?" he sputtered at the same time my eyes widened and I gulped, "Uh-oh."

The floor suddenly rumbled, and before we knew quite what was happening, the tower rose up out of the ground. The sudden motion dislodged the rocks above us, and we lost our balance, falling backwards with twin yelps.

Cowering as tons of earth fell around us, I crunched myself up into a ball, burying my face in my knees and covering my head with my arms. The rumbling continued for at least another minute or two, and then at last it stopped. When I stopped hearing the crunching and thumping of earth dislodging and falling onto the tower, I unfolded myself and shakily stood up. Link had already scrambled back to his feet.

With wide-eyes, I looked around us. We were at least two hundred feet up in the air.

"Holy _shit_ ," I breathed, but before either of us could really react, the stalactite-like rock above the pedestal glowed blue at the top. As I took a better look, I realized the glowing blue light was actually a bunch of runes that now spread down the rock. When they reached the bottom of it, the rock's tip glowed with blue light. The blue light hung on its tip, growing larger and brighter, before the dot fell onto the center of the Sheikah Slate. And…

...Holy shit, the only thing I could think of was that it _really_ looked like pre dripping of a dick.

Really, Nintendo. You couldn't decide _any_ other way to give Link maps and items other than fucking _rock cummies_?

"What has been seen cannot be unseen," I muttered, shuddering.

"What?" Link raised an eyebrow at me.

I winced. "Nothing."

"Oookay." Link shrugged as the robotic voice from the tower said, _"Regional map extracted_ ," in the background. The pedestal gave him back his Sheikah Slate, and he turned towards me again but suddenly froze and looked out towards Hyrule Castle.

"Link?" I said, frowning, but he didn't answer. "...What's wro—?"

All of a sudden, I saw with my own two eyes what was wrong.

Red miasma swirled around the castle like a snake. It coiled around it, the same color as the ooze that had dripped out of the bokoblins when Link had sliced them open. Except this was a much, much larger concentration of it. It was easily as thick around as a tree, and as long as the Sheikah Tower we stood on was tall. It faced us from miles and miles away as it curled around the castle, and the head of it transformed into a massive, boar's head, complete with nasty horns and beady, evil yellow eyes. The very sight of it made my skin crawl.

Then it opened its mouth and _roared_.

"Shit," somebody was chanting weakly. "Shit shit shit shit shit…" It was only a moment later I realized it was me saying that and I immediately clamped my clammy mouth shut.

Even as the calamity beast roared, a pure light shone from inside Hyrule Castle, a light that pulsed and burned with life. The beast roared again furiously, a terrible sound that I heard even in my bones, but the purity of the light was too much for it. Its head sank back to the ground, and the thick miasma faded.

But not for long. Even if I hadn't played the game before, I would've known with absolute certainty that the beast was not done for good. It was only biding its time, waiting for the light that kept it restrained to dim enough that it could consume it.

Link turned to me, pale and shaking. "We… we have to stop that… that _thing_ ," he gulped.

I knew for a fact I was shivering just as badly. "...Yes, we do." I swallowed dryly. "But we're no match for it right now. If we try and go in there as we are…"

"...It'll kill us," Link concluded, voice weak and small.

I nodded, wanting very badly to curl up and go to sleep.

"We'll get stronger," he decided. "We'll hone our skills. Get better weapons and gear. And then go save her. That light… we can't let it consume it. It's…"

"It's her, isn't it," I guessed despite already knowing. "The woman talking in your head."

He nodded, a stricken expression on his face. "I don't know how I know. I… just do."

"We'll save her," I reassured him. I didn't sound terribly confident, however. My voice quivered more than an arrow holder. "But first we have to get off this tower."

~o~

The moment we stepped off the tower, of course, the Old Man dropped out of the sky from a paraglider and landed surprisingly lightly. The paraglider was composed of just a couple pieces of wood and and a maroon cloth stretched between the two. It really didn't look like it could hold a person, but I decided not to question it. Magic had to have been involved in it somehow and it was kind of worthless talking about what was and wasn't possible with a physics-breaking mechanism.

"Hello, you two," he said casually as though he hadn't just appeared out of nowhere, dropping from the sky. "It seems you two have caused quite the enigma, haven't you?"

"How did you know it was us?" Link asked curiously.

The Old Man smiled with a twinkle in his eyes. "You two happen to come out of a cave I did not see you enter, the first people on the Plateau besides myself I've seen in ages, then this tower rises up out of the ground, and who do I find but you beside it! It's not much of a mystery."

"Fair point," Link admitted.

The Old Man gazed up at the tower, wonder in his eyes. "Still… other like this tower have risen up all across Hyrule, one after the other. Whatever you did, it's almost like… a long-dormant power has awoken quite suddenly." He frowned and turned to us. "Did either of you… notice anything odd happen while you were up on the tower?"

Link and I exchanged glances.

"We saw a monster around the castle," Link told him. "And I heard the woman's voice again."

"I see." The old man turned towards Hyrule Castle. "That castle there… the miasma enshrouding it is **Calamity Ganon** , the very entity that brought the whole kingdom to ruin one hundred years ago. It appeared out of nowhere and laid waste to everything in its path. Many tragically lost their lives that day. For a century, Hyrule Castle has managed to just barely hold the beast back. But it still festers, building its strength for the moment it will unleash its blight upon the land once again." The Old Man narrowed his eyes as he regarded the grand symbol of Hyrule. "It would appear that moment is fast approaching."

We were all silent for a few seconds.

The old man faced us again. "Courageous ones, do you intend to go to the castle?"

"Yes," Link and I said. I paused. "But not before we train ourselves a bit," I added.

The old man nodded. "A wise decision. Here on this isolated plateau, we are surrounded on all sides by steep cliffs, with no way down. I would highly recommend not attempting to jump off. You would have no hope of surviving the fall. At least, not without a paraglider like mine."

Interest gleamed in Link's eyes. "Paraglider?" he repeated.

"Oho!" our 'friend' chuckled. "Piqued your interest, have I? Yes, I didn't come soaring down here on my feathery wings, you know. I am of no relation to the great Rito race. Worry not—I would be happy to hand it over… after you run an errand for me, of course."

I narrowed my eyes. "You can't just give it to us for free?" I deadpanned.

"Of course not. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Let's see now… How about I trade it for some nearby treasure?"

"Treasure?" Link said, blinking. "Where is it?"

The old man smiled and started walking off to the west of the tower. "Come and follow me, and I will show you."


	4. The Isolated Plateau, Part 1

_AN: Guess what's still alive, bois?_

 **Chapter 4**

 **The Isolated Plateau, Part 1**

The old man walked slowly. A cool breeze flowed along the surface of the Great Plateau, though strangely the disguised king's hood remained unbothered by it. I blinked at that. It should have been billowing a bit; my hair was, albeit only slightly. Perhaps the weather simply didn't affect him because he was actually a ghost.

We followed him up a short dirt hill, past a small deposit of large rocks. When we reached the top of the hill, I examined the area around us. We faced the retaining wall on the cliff of the Plateau diagonally, to the northwest. Between us and a small lake—more of a pond, really—sat an enemy encampment. A group of bokoblins danced around a bonfire, and on the edge of the encampment closest to us, a pig-faced archer stood looking for enemies on a mini, wooden watchtower. Wooden crates lay scattered around the campsite, with some crudely made, wooden boko spears leaned up against them.

Another, larger lake sparkled in the afternoon sun, beyond the enemy encampment. What looked like broken down statues of upside down pots slept, slowly eroding, on the edges of that lake, and I guessed these to be Guardians. Some pillars, the purpose of which time had long since taken away, stuck up in the water, covered in moss and vines, and what I guessed were two broken stone bridges stuck out above the water, collapsed in the center. It was a bit hard to tell with the way the stone structures were designed, but bridges was my closest guess, anyway. And on the other side of THAT lake slept a glowing orange, black stone Shrine.

The old man stopped and pointed to the Shrine.

"Do you both see that structure there?" he asked softly. "The one shining with a strange light?"

"It's a little hard to miss," Link pointed out.

"It began glowing the exact moment that those towers rose up from the ground. I would think that such a place might house some sort of treasure, wouldn't you?" The old man seemed amused by this.

I blinked. "That does look like the kind of conspicuous place someone might put treasure."

The taller man nodded. "Indeed. Why don't you fetch whatever is inside of it for me? Treasure for the paraglider; a fair exchange, I think."

Link exchanged a sidelong glance with me. "Uh, sure," he said slowly.

We set off ahead of our sudden companion in the direction of the shrine. Link and I skirted around the large pond, and my friend eyed the bokoblin encampment curiously.

"What are you thinking?" I asked him, nudging his side.

The blond shrugged. "Just wondering whether they might have any food or weapons or something we might be able to use."

"There's a lot of them there," I said with a frown. 'Four bokoblins, one of whom has a bow. There's only two of us. Think we can take them on?"

Link narrowed his eyes at the camp. "The ones I've fought before haven't been too skilled. I don't think they've really had any combat training, they're just using them on instinct and past experience. We should be fine."

I gave him a skeptical frown, but nodded. "Alright. You have a sword. I have a spear. Want to try and take them out now while we have the element of surprise, too?"

"Let's do this," he affirmed.

I swallowed a little nervously. Great. Battle. Just what I wanted. Well, at least it was only four red bokoblins. If we allowed them to get their weapons, they might be a _little_ bit of an issue, but like Link said, they were a bit combat stupid. I could've chosen worse opponents for my first fight.

We snuck up around a slight bulge in the land to the tree that the archer bokoblin's watchtower stood next to. We waited until he was looking away from us, then darted behind some crates that sat on the ground in front of a ladder built into the unstable-looking tower. Just before he turned towards us, we ducked down and hid behind them.

"If we take out the archer before we focus on the others, we should be fine," Link reasoned.

I nodded. "Sounds good to me. We don't want arrows flying at us while we focus on a group."

"You go work on the archer," Link suggested quietly. "I'll sneak past him towards the other three."

We watched the bokoblin through a crack between the crates, and when he again turned away from us, we emerged from our hiding spot. We crept carefully along the grass and made our footsteps as quiet as possible. I reached the watchtower and grabbed the ladder, testing out its stability. Link continued forward, stopping on one side of the watchtower for a moment so that the bokoblin wouldn't see him. Meanwhile, I placed a cautious foot on the first rung of the ladder, and when it didn't make any noise, I nodded to myself and clambered up to the top.

The bokoblin, still unaware of my presence, had its back turned to me and so didn't even see it coming when I grabbed my boko spear and whacked it harshly across his head twice. He didn't even have time to react; the first hit dazed him, and the second hit knocked him clear off the watchtower. The moment his head connected with the ground, he melted into shadow and dispersed, thus making no noise.

While I killed the archer, Link had begun to creep up toward the encampment. He withdrew his short-bladed traveler's sword, hand firmly grasped around its dark grip. He made his way towards the bokoblin in the middle of the pack. The only noise coming from him was the crunching of grass beneath his feet, and even this was kept to as much of a minimum as possible. His breathing light, his gaze hyper-focused, Link raised his sword high into the air the moment he reached his target.

The bokoblin never knew what hit him. All it did know was pain as Link's sword stabbed through its neck from behind. Malice dripped from its wound, melting the grass beneath it with an accompanying sizzle for just a moment. Then the bokoblin turned to shadow and dispersed into the atmosphere.

The other bokoblins jolted to attention and stared at Link with bug-eyed shock. He readied his sword for another swipe, but they rushed towards their weapons, avoiding his attack in the process. Link frowned and spun around as one of them picked up a bow, and the other grabbed a simple club.

I leaped off of the watchtower, which wasn't even taller than the tree beside it, and landed lightly on the ground. I then rushed over to help Link as he dashed forward to slay the final two bokoblins. The bokoblin who'd grabbed the bow notched an arrow and fired it at Link, but, graceful and elegant, he deftly spun away from it. In one fluid motion, he used the momentum of the dodge to bring his sword slicing up toward the bokoblin. The club-wielder, however, who had also picked up a shield, screeched and darted forward. It blocked his sword attack, making him stumble, and lashed at his head with its wooden club.

"HIYA!" I cried, cracking my spear across the crown of its head just after it whalloped Link hard. The Champion staggered but shook himself to attention just as the second archer notched another arrow. Link ran at it and knocked the bow out of its hands with a clean swipe of the flat of his sword, then buried the blade in its head. It turned to shadow and dissipated.

The bokoblin with the club and shield, meanwhile, turned to face me angrily, shaking its head. It raised its shield as I jabbed my spear at it, blocking the jab. I frowned and jabbed again. It blocked again. Link snuck up behind it, motioning for me to continue distracting it. I narrowed my eyes and stabbed the wooden spear at it three times; it blocked two, but was knocked off-balance the third time. My partner used this chance to stab through where it's heart would be.

And that was the end of that.

A moment after the bokoblin disappeared like its buddies before it, a flash of purple light drew our attention to the opposite end of the camp from the archer tower. Another tower of similar size had been erected there. A skull-like chest that had two glowing purple eyes sat on top of it. Link grinned.

"Looks like we'll get more than just their weapons and shield for that!" he crowed happily, hurrying over to it and climbing up the ladder. He heaved himself up onto the platform with the chest and opened it.

"What's in there?" I asked.

He reached inside and lifted up another sword, nearly identical to the one he already carried. "Looks like we got a back-up sword."

I whistled appreciatively. "Nice."

"Yeah, mine is feeling weak. I think the blade's going to break soon."

Content with our reward for taking out the encampment, we gathered up the rest of the weapons and shields dropped by the dead bokoblins. Link took the shield since he'd be able to carry it with his short sword out. We each took a bow, very simple ones with supple wood that pulled back easily, and we also found a couple bundles of five arrows lying around the camp, as well as two quivers.

My back a few pounds heavier due to the items I now carried on it, I rolled my shoulders to crack them and grinned at Link. "Alright. Now that those monsters are taken care of, let's head to that shrine."

Link nodded. "Agreed. We should get that done as soon as possible."

We skirted around the decently-sized lake between us and the shining Shrine so that we wouldn't have to get unnecessarily wet. Our weapons clunked on our backs, which was a little annoying, but something I'd just have to get used to. We mostly just enjoyed the peace and warm, clear weather while we walked. At last, though, we reached the Shrine, and stood before it with a sense of awe.

It sat on the edge of a small pond that hugged its southern and western sides. A metal, dented crate sat collecting dust outside it, and I spied a metal chest half unburied in the pond's floor. We were very close to the Plateau's retaining wall now, close enough that its shadow stretched across the ground just five or six feet away. The ground around the stout, ancient structure was a mixture of dirt and small stones.

The Shrine itself, shaped oddly like a laboratory flask, was bulkier on the bottom and thinner on top. It was largely made out of the same smooth black rock that the stalactite on the tower was composed of. It had a curious maze-like design built into the bottom, through which orange light shone, and on the top facing us, the surface of the black stone glowed with an orange Sheikah eye design. Its entrance was currently closed off to us by slabs carved with what looked like ancient writing symbols.

A pedestal like the ones in both the tower and the Shrine of Resurrection sat in the open, on a platform that stuck out from it. Instead of having a slot for Link to place his not-Nintendo Switch in, however, it had another orange Sheikah eye. Frowning, Link moved to set the Sheikah Slate on the glowing eye, but when the screen crossed over the eye, the design switched from orange to blue.

Link startled as the bottom of the shrine glowed blue suddenly as well, and a robotic voice droned, _"Sheikah Slate confirmed."_

A circular design on the floor we stood on glowed blue, drawing my attention to it for the first time, and the same voice said, " _Travel Gate registered to map. Access granted."_

The slabs that blocked us off from the entrance to the Shrine swung inward, revealing a cramped room with only a circular platform on it. We glanced at each other, shrugged, and walked in to stand on the platform.

But nothing happened.

And nothing continued to happen.

I frowned. "What's wrong with this thing?"

"Maybe it's broken?" Link ventured.

"I mean, we have to be supposed to be going down, right?" I said, stomping on what I knew was the elevator to the Shrine. "There's nothing else in this goddamned Shrine than this platform, anyway."

Link frowned. "Maybe it's because we're both standing on it?" he guessed.

I blinked at him. "Eh? What do you mean?"

"Maybe it's only meant to take one person," he said, and stepped off the platform. He turned to watch what happened, and when nothing did, AGAIN, we both frowned. "Okay. You try stepping off."

I did as he told me to. The moment I did, the air hummed with energy and the platform began descending. I moved to get back on it to ride down with him, but Link rose a hand in the universal _stop_ sign.

"Wait. If it only let me down, it might only let me back up."

I froze and frowned. "...That's… a fair point," I grumbled, not liking the implication that I would have to wait here while Link completed the Shrine. It made sense, though, given that not even Zelda had been able to do anything with the Shrines she'd known of in canon. I sighed and ran a hand through my long hair. "Fine, fine. Go do your thing. Get that old man his treasure."

"I'll be back in just a bit," he said with a smile. "Don't let any of those pig-faced freaks sneak up on ya."

"As if," I snorted, rolling my eyes.

Link's head sank below the floor with the descending elevator.

I groaned and slumped to the floor, resting against the Shrine wall. This was going to be fucking boring, wasn't it? What could I do in my spare time? Well, there was a pond nearby.

Hm. A swim might be in order.

...If I enjoyed the feeling of the cold water against my new, sweaty body so much that I failed to pay attention to my surroundings and accidentally gave Link a full view of myself when he came out of the Shrine, it's NOT my fault.

Needless to say, when the old man fluttered in on his paraglider and we were both blushing redder than a Happosai victim on a Friday night, and I was quickly finishing putting my shirt on, he looked confused as FUCK.

~o~

The damn old man didn't give us the paraglider, of course. Oh, no. Instead, he made us travel back to the Sheikah Tower and scout three MORE Shrines scattered around the Great Plateau… but he also promised to throw in a second paraglider so that I could have one, too. Which was helpful for obvious reasons, but I digress. The whole endeavor was good for a video game, but not so much for real life.

Freakin' side quests, man.

Luckily, the whole Fast Travel mechanic—tapping on blue markers on the Sheikah Slate's map—did actually work for me as well. All I did was touch Link's arm and it transported us both to the top of the Tower in a flash. Unluckily, one of the Shrines we needed was surrounded by Guardians I _knew_ were still active from having played the game, one Shrine was located at the top of a steep cliff, and the last Shrine was at one of the highest points of the Plateau, deep within a snowy region.

Ah, fun, fun, fun.

"So… which Shrine do you want to tackle first?" Link asked, blinking down at me.

I shrugged. "The Shrine on the other side of this tower from the Oman Au Shrine seems like it would be best." I pointed to the blue pin we'd marked on the Slate, which was located near the part of the map labeled Eastern Abbey in (thank God) English. "It's closest to us."

He stared out over the land, standing at the edge of the platform in the tower. "Sure," he said, shrugging. "Works for me."

~o~

"Hey, what's up with that skull, do you think?"

"I, uh, don't think that's such a good idea. Look, there's an archer tower."

"Shoot it."

"Wha…? But, er, I um, am not that good with a bow…"

"I'll teach you how. I dunno why, but I think I'm pretty good, like I am with the sword. Here, hold the bow like this―no, no, like _this_ ―shift your fingers up a bit… there we go. Now, notch the arrow like so, holding the string with your fingers like… yep, just like that. Good. Now, aim with your dominant eye, and carefully pull the string back. It's a bit of a longer shot, so aim a bit higher than that. Like so. That's it! Aaaand let go."

 _TWANG!_

"GRAW―!?" The strangled, pained growl cut off as the disgusting little goblin-esque creature died with my arrow buried in its head.

"...I thought you said you weren't a good shot? That was a one-hit kill."

"I, uh… beginner's luck?"

"Hm, maybe… Oh, hey. There's a lamp dangling from the ceiling of the inside of the skull on the other side of that eye socket. ...I wonder what would happen if I shot it down…?"

 _TWANG!_

Several moments later, the lamp fell, and a huge KABOOM filled the air alongside very black smoke, as well as the sound of bokoblins screaming in agony as they died very painful deaths.

"Oh. Um. That, apparently."

I stared flatly at him for several moments. "Okay, you Michael Bay version of Robin Hood," I deadpanned. "Let's move on before we blow up any more of the countryside."

Link stared back at me blankly. "Who's Michael Bay? And who's Robin Hood?"

At least we got a (flaming) spiked boko club and some fire arrows out of the deal once we searched the blackened skull.

~o~

"Oh, hey, look, it's another one of those statues like we just saaaaaaw―is it _moving_? Is it _GLOWING_?"

 _DONG! BEE BEE BEE BEE BEE―_

"FUCK! ITS EYE IS GLOWING! RUN, LINK, _RUN!_ "

 _BEEBEEBEEBEEBEE―_

"GET BEHIND THAT WALL!"

"My life was too short, my life was too short, _my life was too short for this!_ "

 ** _BEEBEEEBEEBEE kaBOOM!_**

"We made it. Oh Hylia, _we made it_. We're _alive._ Fuck, fuck, fuck, _I've never been so happy to be alive_. ...Why does it sound like lots of bat wings flapping?"

We looked up and behind us, above the edge of the rock wall we hid behind with our hearts hammering in our chests from our close encounter.

"...Please tell me that's not a swarm of evil, one-eyed bats heading our way."

"Um. Unfortunately… That is indeed a swarm of evil, one-eyed bats heading our way."

"...I think I'm beginning to hate nighttime."

~o~

"Well, I'm glad to see _someone's happy!_ "

Link blinked. "Eh? Why are you so upset? What happened?"

"While you were down there dicking around in the damn shrine, I got attacked by two more Keese and three skeleton bokoblins, and got a _boko spear thrust into my boob_!" I barked furiously, rubbing my still-sore tit. "That thing was made out of solid _wood_! And even though it's a lot weaker of a weapon than it looks, _it still hurts like hell when its thrust with a lot of force into your boob!_ "

Link blinked and poked at his chest. He looked back up at me, confused. "My chest isn't that sensitive."

"That's because you're a _boy!_ " I growled darkly, remembering the times when I could get hit in the chest and not feel like I got kicked in the balls. "I don't wanna hear it from you!"

Link stared at me for a few seconds longer, then grinned innocently, brought out the Sheikah Slate, and pressed his finger on the screen. Suddenly, in his free hand he was holding a round bomb. "I got weird magic bomb things!"

"Good for you," I groused tenderly.

He canceled out the bomb, which simply vanished from his hand, and put the Sheikah Slate back on his hip. The adorable blond Hylian then reached into his Small Pouch of Holding and, with an even wider grin, pulled a huge two-handed sword that looked _very_ heavy out. I had to jump to the side with a yelp to avoid it slicing my nose off. "I also got a claymore!" he exclaimed, as giddy as a kid in a theme park.

My eyes crossed as I stared wide-eyed at the huge blade I'd almost lost my sniffer to. "Watch what you do with that thing!" I growled, bitch-smacking him across the face.

"Ow! What was that for!?"

"For being a reckless idiot who almost lopped my nose off!"

Link winced. "Oh. Sorry, Eve."

I immediately felt bad. Why did Link have to look so much like a kicked puppy? You just couldn't stay mad at him for long. "It's ok. Just watch where you swing your very heavy, very sharp weapons next time."

"Yes, ma'am."

It felt weird being called ma'am unsarcastically.

"Yeah, well… let's just… move on to the next shrine. The one on that cliff, I think, would be easiest to get to. It'll involve a lot of climbing, though."

Link shrugged. "Fine by me!"

~o~

"Oh, hey, look! A beehive with honey in it!"

"Eh? Oh, hey, so it is. Wait. Why do you have your bow ou― _NO, YOU IDIOT! STOP! DO YOU NOT SEE THE―"_

 _TWANG!_

"...Bee swarm buzzing around it," I finished weakly, facepalming. I then fixed a sheepish Link with a firm glare. "Great. You shot the beehive off the tree branch. And now we've got a bunch of very angry bees buzzing after us."

"...At least we can break up their swarm with fire arrows?" Link offered.

I groaned to the heavens.


End file.
